Sydney in the second Millennium
by aquadulcis
Summary: A genderswitch AU. Which has little to do with the title save that Sydney is where it is set. Probably 39 with traces of 58. Give it a go, mate.


Genderswitch AU: Sydney in the second Millennium.

Alexander really didn't like Jenny. She was loud and obnoxious. She didn't know the meaning of personal space. She was sporty and he did not like sporty people. He failed to see what was so amusing about running around fields all day or swimming up and down the same pool endlessly. Her hair was always mussed up because of it. It was really distracting; he wanted to buy her a comb or something so it wasn't always falling onto her face.

Zan wished more than anything that he did not live on the same street as her. She kept jogging by his house every morning and stopping to talk. She'd walk right through the front door, why the fuck did Hala let her in all the time? She'd just march in and plonk herself down at the breakfast table and start blabbing. It usually took her five minutes before she started stealing food.

"Zaaan, can I have some toast? That looks like nice toast." Then Jenny would take two slices, smile and leave.

It was like getting hit by a garbage truck. You should have seen, should have _smelt_, the fucking thing coming but then it'd run right over you. Bam! He'd go from quiet introspection to staring blankly at the Sydney Morning Herald and wondering where his breakfast had gone. Then he'd resort to stealing from Georgio's plate so he didn't have to get up again.

At least, that was how it usually went. Not today though, today was the day Alexander Geddes took his life back.

Today was the day he locked the door.

Zan sat down to breakfast with a smirk on his face and two pieces of vegemite toast on his plate. The front page of the Telegraph proclaimed that racial tensions were on the rise and he did not give a fuck. He took a bite out of his breakfast and blissfully ignored the way Georgio was guarding his plate. Hala appeared with her hijab neatly in place and a bowl of weetbix. She looked at their mutual roommate and let loose a gentle laugh.

Then he heard someone rapping on the living room window.

Hala automatically stood to get it. Of the three of them she was the only one that was a morning person and the only one that showed any courtesy to unwarranted guests. There was a muffled series of thumps as she tried unsuccessfully to open the front door. He heard some broken conversation before Hala reappeared.

"Alex, where are my keys?"

"Hmmm, they're probably somewhere safe." They were in Alex's room, under a pot plant.

Hala smiled at him, her vivid green eyes scrunching into crescents while her cheeks dimpled. It was her way of silently promising that he would pay for this. She walked out of the kitchen and opened the back door with an ominous creak. With a loud cheer Jenny launched herself over the back gate and quickly appeared in front of him, smiling like an idiot.

Damn.

* * *

Hala invited Jenny around for dinner that evening in retribution and gave her a spare set of keys so that she could come in when she wanted. Zan could not understand why in hell Jenny deserved free entry into their house, they didn't know her that well, but he wasn't about to argue. Hala had the lease in her name. She could easily kick him out and get some other poor sap to split rent. The rental market was pretty shit and Zan wouldn't be able to find another place quickly, especially with his personality. 

Jenny inhaled food like she was never gonna eat again. Georgio had turned out quite a spread, whenever he cooked there were always copious leftovers. Not so today, the slight athlete was onto her third helping of paella. Hala kept smiling at her in a motherly fashion. Georgio would have been as pissed off as he was if it hadn't been for the gratuitous praise he was getting.

"Goyo, this is fantastic." The kid was already calling him Goyo? His own brother barely got away with that.

"Well, I am an excellent chef."

"Not conceited either." Hala hid a smirk behind an elegant hand.

"Hey!"

Zan felt his insides ease a little when somebody laughed, long and sweet. Then they tightened again as he realised that it was Jenny. She'd actually tied her hair back tonight. Zan started listening to their dinner conversation again and immediately wished he hadn't.

"Oh. My. God. You have an Xbox 360?" Jenny's hazel eyes sparkled in the light of this discovery.

"I don't, it's actually Alex's." Hala was a conniving minx and no one was going to tell him otherwise.

They shared a look. Zan hated her when she smiled. Hated her even more when she offered to do the dishes so that Zan could show Jen (they were calling her Jen now?) the console.

"Viva Piñata!" Jen reached for the game that had come in the box.

Zan hated that game. He preferred gun-toting violence himself.

"Ohhh, Ghost recon, Call of duty… I've never played any of these! Have you had it cracked yet?" He tried to tell himself that wasn't one of the sexier things had a girl had said to him lately.

"No, not yet."

"I know how to do it. I looked it up on the net." She touched the Xbox with an undeserved reverence. "Can we play a game?"

By the time he realised that she was kicking his ass at DOA it was midnight. He could tell she'd been about to call it a night, then she saw his old PSone. They were up till dawn playing Point Blank. Georgio had long since given up telling them to shut it. Hala had earplugs. Besides, it was Saturday now. You had to get rid of the weekday blues somehow.

"I should go home." Jenny put down her controller and rubbed her eyelids.

"Yeah, probably." Zan resisted the urge to walk her there.

She was already asleep on the couch anyway.

* * *

When Zan woke up she had gone home. He went out into the backyard and lit a cig. The fresh air was immediately overpowered by his noxious smoke. He could hear Kookaburras in the distance, so they might be getting rain. The clouds seemed to agree with birds. Zan did not like rainy days and he hated rainy nights. He also hated it when Georgio interrupted his thoughts. 

"Somebody's got a giiirrrllfriend, somebody's got a giiirrrllfriend!" Zan hated that smarmy son of a bitch right down to his cheaply dyed roots. Natural his ass…

"Shut up, asshole." Zan hadn't had that many beers last night, so why did his head hurt so much?

"She's pretty young, mate." The other man seemed to melt into the doorframe so much as lean on it.

"She's not my girlfriend, in case you didn't notice we spent last night playing games like a pair of primary school kids." Zan tapped the ash off the end of his fag to emphasise, "Not batting our eyes at each-other."

"Whoa, defensive, you don't seem like a roses and candlelight guy anyway. She could be good for you; she doesn't have a stick up her ass like you do."

"Leave me smoke in peace, please." Zan closed his eyes and did his best to ignore him.

"Sure, sure." The other man huffed in annoyance, "You know, it wouldn't be so bad if you tried to make her happy."

The screen door shut and Georgio was gone. Zan opened his eyes again to look the clouds in the distance. He rested his shoulders against the rough redbrick of their house. He could smell the rain. It was like copper and earth and something else entirely. He really should have felt happy about that since the dam levels were so low. Fuck that, he was learning Theology. What did he care about water?

* * *

One day, some weeks later, Zan saw Jenny as he walked home from uni. Her left arm was a painful canvas of purple, green and red. She noticed him soon after and ran toward him with a grin on her face. He would have sworn that it had not been there before. She was carrying a basketball and had an old backpack slung over her right shoulder. Closer inspection showed that her arm had been bleeding but had scabbed over. It looked nasty. 

"How'd you manage that?" Zan was fairly sure he would not like the answer she was going to give.

"Oh, just fell over on the asphalt this arvo." She gestured at the ball. "I was trying to do a dunk but I'm too short."

Zan was right, he didn't like it. She was lying to him.

"You should stop by our place on the way home." He was already guiding her with one hand. "Hala will know how to patch you up."

He was vaguely surprised when she followed him. She even leant into him slightly. He didn't stop her. When they reached the house she threw her basketball at Goyo's head. Then they got into a fight. Then Hala patched her up.

"You must have hit the ground pretty hard." Hala had to pull out pieces of gravel before she could even get to dressing the wound. Jenny did not flinch.

"We go at it pretty hard at practice." Jenny smiled lightly.

Zan often talked to Hala about what she was learning from her med degree. Jenny's bruise was about a day old. If she'd just gotten it that afternoon it wouldn't have coloured so much, wouldn't have scabbed as much either. He didn't know why she'd feel the need to keep this information from them. Some part of him did know and didn't want to acknowledge it. He didn't, couldn't believe that someone would knowingly hurt a nice kid like Jen. At the basest level it wasn't sporting.

Hala managed to keep her for dinner again. Zan was beginning to realise that the other woman wasn't inviting her out of pity. She liked having her around. Liked having someone sweet and genuine in the house to temper her roommates. Jenny did cool things down a little. Even though she fought with Georgio and gave Zan the shits. She just, made them softer around the edges.

Zan made quiche that night. Georgio bitched about the lack of meat but Hala and Jenny enjoyed it. Zan knew that he made a damn fine quiche. His quiches had gotten him laid before. Perhaps they would again from the way Jen was looking at him. God no.

He was not going to think like that. He wasn't that guy.

After dinner Georgio stood dramatically and grabbed Hala by the shoulder. She squawked at the indignity of having his arm around her and hastily checked her scarf was still in place. He grinned like a madman and basked in the glow of her crossness.

"We," He threw one hand in the air and pointed it dramatically, "Are going out for coffee!"

Jenny threw her hands in the air and whooped her agreement. Zan glared a little. He actually spent most of his time glaring, so really, he glared a lot. This was a glare that was small in magnitude, however, so he wasn't particularly pissed off.

"Georgio, I have work due tomorrow that needs doing. I can't go out."

Georgio kept smiling.

"Of course you're coming out, your work isn't due until the afternoon. You have plenty of time!"

"How do you know…" Zan didn't recall telling him that and anyway, he liked to be finished the night before.

"Besides, you're buying."

* * *

Hala seemed to have forgiven Georgio by the time they made it to their local café. It had some of the best pastries on their side of the city. Georgio ended up slipping him a tenner to help cover drinks and kept winking lasciviously. Hala had some chamomile tea and Georgio followed suit, probably to impress her. Jenny ended up with vanilla gelato and Zan had a cup of the strongest coffee that the barista was willing make. He took it black, of course, without sugar. 

Jenny kept moaning her contentment every time she licked some of her dessert from the tiny spoon it came with. Zan focused on his beverage and thought about the work he wasn't doing. He distracted himself further by hating their small, wobbly table. He could feel Jenny looking at him eventually, as though she was trying to say something but couldn't. He tried not to think about Jenny, she was giving him a headache.

Tried being the operative word. She was like a splinter, worming her way further into his skin every time he tried to pull her out or ignore her. He glanced over at her and saw that she was smiling at him. His cup suddenly seemed warmer in his hands. A breeze came in from the ocean and his ill mood eased.

"Hey, Alex?" Hala interjected reluctantly.

"Hmm?"

"Café's closing."

Zan stood up and then offered his hand to Jenny, so she didn't have to lean on her bruised arm. Georgio didn't say anything. He looked over toward the other man and saw why. He was mooning over Hala again. His normally strong posture had wilted and his bravado had disappeared somewhere. Hala had been rooting around in her handbag for something and he restored his façade by the time she found it.

They dodged the dense array of tables and chairs to get to the exit. Hala stayed back with Zan while Jenny and Georgio played street soccer with a coke bottle. Of all the people he had ever known, Hala was the one he got along with most of all. They understood eachother. Hala had been through the foster system, just like he had. He'd been luckier than she had, though. His foster father had been a good man down to his bones, for all the good that had done him.

Hala sighed.

"You like him, don't you." If it had been anyone else, he probably would have teased them.

"Yeah, it wouldn't work though." Her gentle voice lacked it's usual undertone of steel.

"Are you sure of that?"

"Yeah, he's just so… him." She pointed towards the fabric on her head, "And I'm so me."

Zan believed that religion was less than half of it, even if the two of them had very different ideas about sex. Hala probably didn't understand that Georgio spent most of his time womanising because he didn't like it, not because he did. He was even embarrassed about it and tried to keep it as far from Hala's eyes as he possibly could. They reached their house before he had time to tell her. Jenny was still walking away, waving all the while. Zan jogged a little to catch up.

"I'll walk you home."

"Oh, no, don't worry about it." From the corner of his eye he saw Georgio hold open the door for Hala.

"I'll worry if I don't." Even though he'd said it somewhat grumpily, she smiled and shook her head at him.

"You're _such_ a gentleman, Mister Alexander Geddes."

Zan lit a cig.

"Don't you know it."

"Those things will kill you, you know?" Jenny frowned at him.

He was counting on it. He'd stubbed out the thing by the time they reached her house. Well, near her house.

"My Dad'll kill me if he thinks I've been off with strange men, he can't seem to get over me growing up." She waved her hands about and laughed but he felt there was truth in what she was saying, "Thanks for walking me this far though."

"You're welcome…" She'd already disappeared behind a tree.

He realised that he didn't actually know where she lived.

* * *

They didn't see Jenny at all the next week. Zan found himself loitering over the paper, tensed for a dramatic entrance. Hala had told him to stop moping after the fifth time he'd done it. He'd told her to shut the hell up. Georgio started avoiding him. He kept feeling like he should be running somewhere. 

When Zan walked home at the end of each day he scanned the road for her. He learned more about his street in that week than he had in the past 18 months that he'd been living there. He even started sitting on their brick letterbox when he got home and chain smoking. One evening Georgio came home to find him doing it and staged an intervention. The intervention consisted of him being sat on in their backyard while Hala soaked all his cigarettes in a bucket of water and bleach.

"I can still dry them out, you know." He was lucky he could breathe while under that giant lug he called a flatmate.

"It's symbolic and I'm throwing them in the bin after I toss the fluids out in the laundry sink." Hala leant against the barbeque and nonchalantly observed her fingernails.

"I am about five minutes away from religious, political and racial slurs." He paused for breath, "Just so you know."

"Shut up whitey." Georgio lifted off slightly and then sat down again, sniggering. Zan couldn't say anything after that.

* * *

After a solid week and a half had elapsed, most of that spent on the wagon, Zan was ready to break. He would never admit it though, so he was lucky that he had Nicorette patches and an insightful friend like Hala. 

"You should go visit her." Hala dropped down next to him on their couch and handed him a piece of paper, "Here's her address."

"This is scented." He responded disdainfully as he was walking out the door.

"Shove it." Hala yelled in response.

Zan's treacherous feet propelled him towards number fourteen. It had a cute, little garden and a white picket fence. He pulled up the rusting latch on the gate and walked towards the patio. There were neat lines of shoes resting under the canopy. Zan wasn't sure if he was expected to take his own shoes off. He decided to knock first and see if anyone told him to...

Someone was yelling inside Jenny's house. He tried the door. It was open. He went in. The shouting got louder the further he went down the hallway. He could hear Jenny. He could see a guy slamming a door. The door was heavy. It had locks on the outside. The guy was bigger than him, intimidating. Broader but not taller. His face was red and contorted. Spittle was jumping from his lips every time he opened his mouth. Jenny was crying.

Jenny was crying.

Zan punched that fucker in the face, hard, before he had time to notice that he was even there. He fell down like a tonne of bricks. Zan kicked him before he could get up again. He had scored a lucky punch. The fat bastard hadn't even seen him before he'd knocked him out. His hands fumbled, adrenaline fuelled. He pulled the bolts out and opened the door. Jenny squinted at him.

She was dressed in dirty pyjama shorts and a tank. Her hair was clumping to the side and she had a bleeding cut on her forehead. She was as pale as a ghost. Her arm was the only part of her skin that still had colour; it was more painfully bruised than before. Her eyes lightened in recognition and she looked at him as though he were God.

"The sun." She croaked, feverish.

Zan pulled her to her feet. He'd seen some thongs near the front door. He pulled her along with him and made her put them on before dragging her onto the street. She walked on her own but she wouldn't let go of his hand. He took her home. They closed the front door against the world and didn't move any further.

"I thought I'd never get out of there." Her golden eyes searched his and he felt their lives snapping together like a piece of red string. "I was there for so long."

"We need to call the cops." His hands started to touch her hair of their own volition, not his, "We need to call an ambulance."

She began to touch where he was and her fingers came away red. Zan was feeling a little not cut out for this kind of thing.

"I just bumped my head, it's not so bad, it's ok." The look on her face said she wanted it to be ok.

Zan gave in for the first time in his life and gave her a hug. Not a tight one but he didn't let go. Jenny was less reserved. She didn't let go either.

Hala appeared from the kitchen. For one short moment she was jeering lightly before she saw the state of them both.

"Oh God." Her hand came to her mouth of it's own volition.

"Call triple o." Zan's voice was shakey still and he didn't like it.

Jenny started crying as the shock set in.

He patted her head as gently as possible.

"You'll be alright, you'll be alright." He was going to make sure of it.

* * *

I've wanted to write one of these for forever. It seems I'm the kinda person that recognises a very cliched idea, a potentially quite bad one and does it anyway. I will probably write more of this as time goes on but for the time being it sits on its own. Uhhh, please tell me if it's completely whacked out though... 


End file.
